The better the transport, and the less the DAC has to worry about jitter, the better the DAC can do its job. They are both important ... but if I was upgrading one at a time, I would do the DAC first.
Its all in the DAC?
Hello All,
I currently own a Pioneer Elite DV45a. The DAC in the Pioneer sounds grainy in my system. When I use it as transport only to my B&K ref 50, the sound quality and stage opens up and sounds much better. I use my system for both 2 channel and HT. I am considering a reference quality CD palyer; but it seems to me that the quality of the sound is really in the DAC and not the transport. As long as the DAC can discern between 1 and 0 from the transport and the clocks are in sync between the transport and the DAC, which should be the case for most modern CD players, I should be able to get reference quality sound by just adding a high quality DAC to my system. If there is any jitter in the system at all, the DAC should have enough de-jitter buffer space to take care of it. Do you agree?
I currently own a Pioneer Elite DV45a. The DAC in the Pioneer sounds grainy in my system. When I use it as transport only to my B&K ref 50, the sound quality and stage opens up and sounds much better. I use my system for both 2 channel and HT. I am considering a reference quality CD palyer; but it seems to me that the quality of the sound is really in the DAC and not the transport. As long as the DAC can discern between 1 and 0 from the transport and the clocks are in sync between the transport and the DAC, which should be the case for most modern CD players, I should be able to get reference quality sound by just adding a high quality DAC to my system. If there is any jitter in the system at all, the DAC should have enough de-jitter buffer space to take care of it. Do you agree?